Has the time come to switch off? The pandemic fuelled an increase in the amount of time people spent online, but this trend appears to have fizzled out in 2022, resulting in the biggest drop in a decade.
Internet users could be seeking to limit the amount of time they spend on their computers and devices – at least, so suggests recent research from GWI Core.
After analysing the time spent online daily between 2013 and last year, among 2,595,435 internet users aged 16 to 64, the report identified a 13-minute decline in time spent online in 2022 compared to the year before. This amounts to the largest drop in the last 10 years.
Internet users spent six hours and 43 minutes a day on their online activities last year, including all connections (smartphone, computer and tablet). On average, an adult is awake for about 15 hours a day, the GWI report says, implying that an internet user spends almost half of their waking hours on online activities.
Still, 2022 is the year with the lowest amount of time spent online since 2019, when an average of six hours and 41 minutes of time spent online daily was recorded.
"While more people spent more time online during Covid, the daily average is now almost on par with pre-pandemic figures. It's a potential sign that we've reached a kind of internet-saturation point, but to get a better sense of this in action, you need to look at the situation worldwide," reads the GWI "Connecting the Dots" report.
The decrease is visibly observed around the world, notably explained by the increase in cybercrime, but also by the resumption of a more active lifestyle post-pandemic: "Even in internet growth markets, time spent isn't increasing as it used to."
"In the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America, average daily time spent online has fallen by 20 minutes and 34 minutes, respectively, since 2021 – and this remains the case among younger audiences, too.
"Covid, obviously, has a part to play in this; people have less free time now, and fewer are using the internet day-to-day than they did in lockdown," the report concluded.
